At last Japan has managed to get a fourth so-called 'spy' satellite up and running [English here]without (so far) any hiccups. This brings the total up to four--two radar and two optical satellites--and allows the Japanese intelligence community to monitor any point on the planet within 24 hours. But, while there were cheers for a successful launch, a far cry from the November 2003 disaster in which two intelligence-gathering satellites were destroyed, this current effort was also the sad last ride of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), based on Tanegashima Island near Kagoshima. Future satellite launches, it has been announced, will be a private-venture affair run by the industrial giant who helped to fund the current mission, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
The announcement of a successful satellite launch on 24th February was followed a day later by coverage in the Asahi Shimbun concerning preliminary plans for a revamped Cabinet Intelligence Research Office (CIRO), part of the drive to bring a US-style Japanese National Security Council (JNSC) into existence. It is hoped that this will improve intelligence analysis, coordination and prompt dissemination by "breaking down bureaucratic sectionalism". Prime Minister Abe Shinzo himself has been strongly behind the effort, championed as another step in Japan's "emerging intelligence independence".
Yet, how 'independent' are these new intelligence capabilities? It is wonderful that Japan can now ogle any point on the globe within 24 hours, but the quality--at best a 60cm resolution--is worse than some commercial satellites in current production, and not a patch on the US military optics that can often pinpoint to 20cm or less. 500 billion Yen is a large pricetag for an outdated system, especially if Japan will have to continue to rely on the US for detailed imagery. Worryingly, signs have been surfacing in the media that suggest bureaucrats are laying the blame for technological inferiority at the doorstep of the 1969 Peaceful Use of Space Principle; but the link is tangental at best and is probably an attempt to restart the debate on new 'realist' space policy, which had stalled last summer.
To read the 2000 Armitage-Nye Report , many claim, is to see the blueprint for Abe's latest efforts in intelligence reform. A bright shiny JNSC may be nothing more than a merry jig to a US tune; a streamlining process to remedy functional inefficencies dictated by US gaiatsu. Yet, if you follow the flow of study-groups, think-tanks and policy-units it is clear that the Government's scope is much, much broader. An Official Secrets Act; Counter-Terrorism; an Intelligence Select Committee; and a Japanese MI6: Cutting down bureaucratic sectionalism and launching a full set of satellites are, as one official in the Cabinet Office put it, "only the beginning of the beginning."
The announcement of a successful satellite launch on 24th February was followed a day later by coverage in the Asahi Shimbun concerning preliminary plans for a revamped Cabinet Intelligence Research Office (CIRO), part of the drive to bring a US-style Japanese National Security Council (JNSC) into existence. It is hoped that this will improve intelligence analysis, coordination and prompt dissemination by "breaking down bureaucratic sectionalism". Prime Minister Abe Shinzo himself has been strongly behind the effort, championed as another step in Japan's "emerging intelligence independence".
Yet, how 'independent' are these new intelligence capabilities? It is wonderful that Japan can now ogle any point on the globe within 24 hours, but the quality--at best a 60cm resolution--is worse than some commercial satellites in current production, and not a patch on the US military optics that can often pinpoint to 20cm or less. 500 billion Yen is a large pricetag for an outdated system, especially if Japan will have to continue to rely on the US for detailed imagery. Worryingly, signs have been surfacing in the media that suggest bureaucrats are laying the blame for technological inferiority at the doorstep of the 1969 Peaceful Use of Space Principle; but the link is tangental at best and is probably an attempt to restart the debate on new 'realist' space policy, which had stalled last summer.
To read the 2000 Armitage-Nye Report , many claim, is to see the blueprint for Abe's latest efforts in intelligence reform. A bright shiny JNSC may be nothing more than a merry jig to a US tune; a streamlining process to remedy functional inefficencies dictated by US gaiatsu. Yet, if you follow the flow of study-groups, think-tanks and policy-units it is clear that the Government's scope is much, much broader. An Official Secrets Act; Counter-Terrorism; an Intelligence Select Committee; and a Japanese MI6: Cutting down bureaucratic sectionalism and launching a full set of satellites are, as one official in the Cabinet Office put it, "only the beginning of the beginning."
R J F Villar
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